Ah yes... I have been cursed since birth (1946!) by this all-pervasive, guilt-operated Control Mechanism. Beneath the blistering suns of YOUTH, I've worn the black, itchy woolens of Puritan Ethics until my skin's broken out in terminal hives! Even now, at age sixty-three, I find myself having to consciously perform the daily ritual of tearing off the sable Hawthornian tunic that re-grows onto my back during the night like Prometheus's heart (or was it his liver..." I forget.) and hurling it petulantly back to the skies! I envy Modern Youth's unconscious and unfettered acceptance of their bodies and the naturalness of their own sexuality (but that's all I envy them.) Puritanism is in my genes (and my jeans!).

I even blame the fact that I seem incapable of writing Fiction on... you guessed it-- Puritanism. See, fiction, by definition, is 'telling lies.' Oh, I know there's Truth in Fiction. And having been a pathological liar in my youth, you'd think I could spin off novels and short stories like a factory conveyor belt. But somehow, at this age, when I embark on a fictional endeavor... a deep voice from somewhere in my psyche intones, "Now Tommy... is this the truth? Or are you just 'telling stories' again? Shame on you! Now... you know better than that, Tommy. You have perfectly good true stories to tell... don't you!"

Well... I tell you what. After I finish this second memoir I'm working on, (due out in a month or two... if not by August 1st, then by Christmas for sure {damn... I am so shameless!}) I am going to force myself to write something fictional! A short story at least! But in the meantime I'm wrestling with this account of several of my youthful misadventures as a child of the 1950's... me as the minion of my own y-chromosomes (the y-chromosomes made me do it, I tells ya!). (Told you I was a pathological liar... back then).

The following is an excerpt from one of those (true... I swear!) stories (soon to be published {oh, did I already tell you that? Anyway, stay tuned...}). As in many of the memories included in the collection... I dealt a lot with Old People back then (yeah, yeah... I know-- I AM an Old People now... what goes around, comes around, etc., etc. I get it, OK?). Old people can sometimes be scary to tots, you may recall. The Oldster in this account happens to be my grandfather, Leon T. Craig, a high-ranking official in the self-appointed Puritan Gestapo...

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My first actual memory of the man? Baggy bib-overalls, straw hat, and workboots. Up there on a rickety stepladder hammering nails into something. Leathery and sun-weathered. Sixty-ish. Just a dark silhouette up there against the sun. Oblivious to me down below, four years old and soft, on a luckless four-leaf-clover-hunt… telling myself that maybe if I could actually find one, just once, then I’d get luck at finding them...

But wait… a snake! A cute, little, slithering, green shoelace of a snake! Instantly I’ve got it clamped gently between my thumb and forefinger, right behind the head. It coils itself delightfully around my fist, spring-tight! This is better than any four-leaf clover! I just bagged me a new pet!

“Grampie!” I cry, scampering oh-so-happily over to the base of the ladder… the cat presenting his master the mouse. “Lookit! Look what I just caught, Grampie!”

Grampie stiffens, his hat eclipsing the sun, splashing a kaleidoscope of prismatic beams every which way around me… his face gone suddenly dark like the center of some black-eyed susan (I can dimly make out the eyes) …not a sun-shiny face at all, but an angry, Old Testament God-face… and the Right Hand of Grampie rising... and then pointing the Claw Hammer of Damnation directly down upon me… He speaketh.

“Even the lowly DOG will VOMIT when it swallows the SERPENT!”It’s a point-blank, sawed-off volley that sends me back-pedaling on my heels and landing me on my bottom in the dandelions, allowing Mr. Snake to slip right through my fingers and go slithering off on a tear through the grass, zipping out of sight fast like someone who’s dealt with That Particular Voice before!

Talk about your ultimate Mood-Swing Moment!

“But I wasn’t gonna eat’im, Grampie!”

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I’ve never really known Grampie very well. He simply isn’t knowable to some little kid like me, fundamentalist Bible soldier that he is, evangelizing that everything fun is a sin. Nope, and hanging around Grampie for any period of time always leaves me feeling kind of jumpy, always looking over my shoulder for any number of evils… but especially for Satan, of course… and we all know what it is that Satan wants.

…So! Amusing yourself with a little game of Solitaire, eh? Well, Satan’s in that deck of cards, Mister!